Tomoyuki Yamashita

Tomoyuki Yamashita (8 November 1885-23 February 1946) was a General of the Imperial Japanese Army who was nicknamed "The Tiger of Malaya" for his decisive victory at the Battle of Singapore, said by Winston Churchill to have been the worst military disaster in the history of the United Kingdom. He was executed for war crimes committed in World War II four months after the war's end.

Biography
Tomoyuki Yamashita was born on 8 November 1885 in Otoyo, Kochi Prefecture, on the island of Shikoku in Japan. In November 1905, he graduated from the Imperial Japanese Army Academy and fought in World War I as a Lieutenant, fighting against the German Empire at the Battle of Tsingtao in 1916. In 1925, he was promoted to Lieutenant-Colonel before becoming a Lieutenant-General in 1937. He insisted that Japan should keep peaceful relations with the United States and United Kingdom, and as a result he was posted to an unimportant position in the Kwantung Army. However, in November 1941 he was given command of the Japanese 25th Army and was ordered to take over British Malaya at the start of World War II for Japan in December 1941. The ensuing Battle of Singapore was a very successful Japanese victory, with Prime Minister Winston Churchill calling it the worst military disaster in British history. Yamashita was nicknamed the "Tiger of Malaya" for his ferocity in battle, and he was held responsible for massacres against prisoners of war and civilians at Sook Ching and Alexandra Hospital.

On 17 July 1942, Yamashita was sidelined to Manchukuo with the Japanese First Area Army after he called Singaporean civilian leaders "citizens of Japan", which was against Prime Minister Hideki Tojo's plans for the conquered peoples. After the downfall of Hideki Tojo in 1944, Yamashita was posted to the Philippines to defend the islands from the United States, and he led 262,000 Imperial Japanese Army troops. In February 1945, he ordered Admiral Sanji Iwabuchi to make the Philippine capital of Manila into a battleground against the Americans, and the Manila Massacre ensued. He used delaying tactics to keep his army in Kiangan, Ifugao Province in central Luzon until the Japanese surrender on 2 September 1945. At this point, he only had 50,000 troops left due to disease and attacks by the Americans and Filipinos, and he surrendered to the American general Jonathan M. Wainwright (who had held out on Corregidor for several months during the fall of the Philippines and was declared a hero) and the British general Arthur Percival (who surrendered to Yamashita at Malaya). Due to the command responsibility rules, Yamashita was charged with war crimes, including the Sook Ching massacre of 1942 and the execution of American prisoners-of-war, and in 1946 he was sent to the gallows. Yamashita brought up the good and friendly nature of the American officers who jailed him and said that he hoped that his Shinto gods would bless the executioner, saying that he took responsibility for his actions and did not blame the executioner. He was hanged on 23 February 1946, and in December his chief-of-staff Akira Muto was also executed.